Last week I got to work from the client's office in Sacramento, and never having been to CA before I decided to take a long week and see San Francisco, and a little bit of wine country. It was an eventful trip, I had my first In-N-Out burger, attempted to kill countless CA drivers (I swear they all drive like they're in IA, the traffice problems would be pratcially non-existant if they would just drive like Chicago-ians), saw the headquarters of HP, Google, and Stanford's campus, caught up with Andy, caught up with Lep, saw Alcatraz, and wine country. Photos are online. Carlie promised to write captions, so I'll put them up as soon as I get them from her.

As you know I travel constantly for work, and I have a company issued laptop (Compaq Evo N610c), but it's heavy, and it sucks!!!!! Chances are I will not be receiving a new one for 2-3 years.

So here's where the question comes in, If I keep saving my Marriott points until around mid-September I'd have enough to get a Sony T series for free. So the question is should I blow my hard earned Marriott points on this computer?

It would leave me with no Marriott points to use for vacations, etc. But then again I've only ever used points for one stay, I tend to go with a group of people, and in that circumstance it's usually better to pay for a room and everyone split.

Well it's official, I had a very happy voice mail waiting for me when I returned from Roma. "Fly to Erie on Monday, and transition, pack your things, and fly home on Tuesday. And you're done with Erie!!!

So this week I spent trying to figure out where to go next. Ready.... Irony of Ironies... I'm headed to Des Moines (our one project in the state of Iowa). I'm off to a national P&C carrier on Monday morning (yay for direct flights, yay for leaving after 8am). I had to fight with HR to avoid some project in podunk GA, but fortunately that disaster was averted. So if you're in or around DSM let me know... We'll get together, I'm sure I'll be making a trip or two up to Welch Ave. And mayhaps (Scott, Adam) I can finally make that trip to KC that I've been threatening...

Well here's the skinny on the work update.
The current wave is supposed to be done by the end of March.
The next (and final) wave is supposed to be done in August - yes August. Another summer spend in Erie, bahh!!
And I am no longer in the hotel (apparently 160k marriott points was enough) I'm in a "wonderful" corporate apartment. As one of my co-workers desrcibes it "a trailer court with foundations" - beautiful.

The only silver lining, this software we're implementing is still supposed to sell like a Mo-Fo, and it's selling like crazy in Europe right now, and they are so short on resouces they are even looking for resources in the US, so I'm hoping to roll onto the project in the UK - working in the downtown London office, that'll work for me!

On my way out of town on Monday I sat in a window seat and watched the 3rd largest city in the country shrink beneath me, it was quite amazing how small the world's tallest building looks from 30,000 feet. And you get quite a unique perspective on the sunrise from way up there, it was neat to see it creep slowly over Lake Michigan.